Vancouver Stock Exchange Central Crude takes a big jump

It wasn’t the price of gold and it wasn’t drill results. Central Crude jumped $1.29 to close at $4.15 after touching a year-high of $4.25 this week on volume of more than a million shares on news that Hemlo Gold has bought an 11% interest in the company.

Central’s main asset is its Mishibishu Lake gold property in northeastern Ontario where Noranda, which holds Hemlo as a subsidiary, is already well on the way to earning a 60% interest. In the past year Central could have been bought for as little as 35 cents a share.

As if the Mishibishu area didn’t already have enough credibility, although there’s no production from the area yet, this move by Hemlo seems to have given Central Crude and the whole Mishibishu area a further stamp of approval. Hemlo already bought into the area by taking a piece of Windarra Minerals (N.M., May 2 /88) which has a 25% stake in the Magnacon gold property operated by Muscocho Explorations. Magnacon is the pioneer Mishibishu gold project. Echo Bay Mines has recently bought a control block of Muscocho itself as a means of getting into the area. Nearby is the Granges Exploration/MacMillan Energy joint venture.

Windarra moved up 7 cents this week to close at $1.37 on 326,300 shares, while MacMillan was up a nickel to close at $1.65 on 70,900 shares.

The Applegath group of companies are also big players in the area. That might help explain why one of the group, Oneida Resources, gained 37 cents to close at $1.63 on 307,000 shares. Oneida adjoins the Central property on the west. Alotta Resources, another Applegath company, was also active this week although it closed unchanged at 85 cents on 767,200 shares. Alotta has been getting some interesting copper-nickel values from a Quebec property recently.